The Red Planet's nearest approach to us occurs as the Morning Star and the Largest Gas Giant appear together for a planetary spectacle in March 2012. The spring equinox brings about the Sun-Earth Day celebration and Comet Garrard joins the party.

In this space wallpaper, a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket blasts off from Space Launch Complex-41 at Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Feb. 24, 2012, with the U.S. Navy’s Mobile User Objective System-1 (MUOS-1) satellite.

Russian scientists have drilled 13,000 feet below Antarctica to the Lake Vostok, sealed off to the world for at least 14 million years, and if life can be found there, it may be possible in similar conditions on Europa and Enceladus.

In this space wallpaper, DARPA’s Galileo program seeks to bridge the precision fiber optic controls and long-baseline astronomical interferometry technical communities to enable imaging of objects in GEO faster than is possible today.

Properties of asteroid Lutetia have been found to be similar to the original material that formed the Earth. The animation depicts what is thought to have caused its drastic change in orbit to now reside in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.